The Huffington Post (sometimes abbreviated Huff Post or HuffPo) is a left-leaning[2][3] American online news aggregator and blog that has both localized and international editions founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, Jonah Peretti, and briefly, Andrew Breitbart,[4][5] featuring columnists.[6] The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content and covers politics, business, entertainment, environment, technology, popular media, lifestyle, culture, comedy, healthy living, women's interests, and local news.

The Huffington Post was launched on May 9, 2005 as an overtly liberal/left commentary outlet and alternative to news aggregators such as the Drudge Report,[7][8][9] and some still consider it to espouse liberal views.[10][11][12] On February 7, 2011, AOL acquired the mass market[13]Huffington Post for US$315 million, making Arianna Huffington editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group.[14][15]

History

The Huffington Post was founded by Arianna Huffington on May 9, 2005.[18] It has an active community, with over one million comments made on the site each month.

Prior to The Huffington Post, Huffington hosted a website called Ariannaonline.com. Her first foray into the Internet was a website called Resignation.com which called for the resignation of President Bill Clinton and was a rallying place for conservatives opposing Clinton.[19][20][21]

Local editions

In approximately June 2007, the site launched its first local version, HuffPost Chicago.[23] In June 2009, HuffPost New York[24] was launched, followed shortly by HuffPost Denver[25] which launched on September 15, 2009,[26] and HuffPost Los Angeles[27] which launched on December 2, 2009.[28] In 2011, three new regional editions were launched: HuffPost San Francisco on July 12,[29]HuffPost Detroit,[30] on November 17,[31] and HuffPost Miami in November.[32]HuffPost Hawaii was launched in collaboration with the online investigative reporting and public affairs news service Honolulu Civil Beat on September 4, 2013.[33]

International editions

The Huffington Post launched its first international edition, HuffPost Canada, on May 26, 2011.[34] On July 6 of the same year, the Huffington Post UK launched its UK edition.[35] On January 23, 2012, Huffington, in partnership with Le Monde and Les Nouvelles Editions Indépendantes, launched Le Huffington Post, and the launch of French-language edition is the first in a non-English speaking country.[36]
On February 8, another French language edition was launched in the Canadian province of Quebec.[37] On May Day, a US-based Spanish-language edition was launched under the name HuffPost Voces, replacing AOL's Hispanic news platform, AOL Latino.[38] The following month an edition for Spain was announced, as was one for Germany.[39] On September 24, an Italian edition, L'Huffington Post, was launched, directed by journalist Lucia Annunziata in collaboration with the media company Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso.[40] On May 6, 2013, an edition for Japan was launched with the collaboration of The Asahi Shimbun, the first edition in an Asian country.[41] With the launch of Al Huffington Post, there is a third francophone edition, this time for the Maghreb area.[42] On October 10, Munich-based Huffington Post Deutschland has been put online in cooperation with the liberal-conservative magazine Focus, covering German-speaking Europe.[43] In January 2014, Arianna Huffington and Nicolas Berggruen announced the launch of the WorldPost, created in partnership with the Berggruen Institute.[44] Its contributors have included former British prime minister Tony Blair, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, novelist Jonathan Franzen and musician Yo-Yo Ma. On January 29, 2014, the Brazilian version was launched as Brasil Post, in partnership with Abril Group, the first in Latin America.[45] In September 2014, Huffington Post announced they will launch in Greece, India, and introduce HuffPost Arabi, an Arabic version of the website.[46][47] On August 18, 2015, HuffPost Australia was launched.[48]The Huffington Post planned to launch a Chinese version in 2015.[49] Due to strict media controls, the content of Chinese version would not include serious news report, only entertainment and lifestyle.[50]

Vertical organization

In 2011, after its purchase by AOL, The Huffington Post subsumed many of AOL's Voices properties (including AOL Black Voices, which had originally independently established in 1995 as Blackvoices.com, and AOL Latino). The Voices brand was expanded in September 2011 with the launch of Gay Voices, a vertical dedicated to LGBT-relevant articles. Other established sections, such as Impact (launched in 2010 as a partnership between Huffington Post and Causecast),[51][52]Women, Teen, College, Religion, and the Spanish-language Voces (en español) are also sorted under the Voices meta-vertical.

By late 2013, however, The Huffington Post was taking steps to operate as more of a "stand-alone business" within AOL, taking control of more of its own business and advertising operations, and directing more effort towards securing "premium advertising".[53]

Contributors

In addition to columns by Arianna Huffington and a group of contributors such as John Conyers, Harry Shearer, Leonard Kim, Jeff Pollack, and Roy Sekoff, The Huffington Post has many bloggers—from politicians and celebrities to academics and policy experts—who contribute on a wide range of topics. Specialist contributors include spiritual author Craig Taro Gold[54] and health expert Jeff Halevy.[55]

Contributors to the site are unpaid, a fact which has engendered some controversy.[56]

Celebrities are allowed to post blogs on the site, and a number have opted to do so over the years. In many cases, such as that of Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, content is cross-posted among multiple sites.[57]

The site also publishes columns by specialists in fields such as Cenk Uygur and Anand Reddi on global health issues, Alice Waters on food, Taryn Hillin who is the Associate Editor of Weddings and Post Divorce, Harold Katz on dental health, Suzie Heumann on sex, Diane Ravitch on education, Frances Beinecke and Phil Radford on climate change and the environment, Jacob M. Appel on ethics, Howard Steven Friedman on statistics and politics, Auren Hoffman on business and politics, Jon LaPook on medicine, Cara Santa Maria on science, Nancy Rappaport on child psychiatry, and Iris Krasnow on marriage. Colon cancer survivor and awareness advocate Eric Ehrmann, one of the original contributors to Rolling Stone in 1968, has been part of HuffPo's group of bloggers since 2009, posting independent political commentary on The Huffington Post, The Huffington Post UK, Le Huffington Post, El Huffington Post, and Al Huffington Post Maghreb. It publishes scoops of current news stories and links to selected prominent news stories.[58] Author and former Hollywood story analyst Julie Gray writes for the Post.[59] Michal Shapiro, former Director of Music Videos, LINK TV, has covered "world music" for the "Post" since April 11, 2010.[60]

On February 17, 2016, it was announced that the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, would guest edit a series of articles as part of a collaboration designed to improve and better understand mental health issues affecting young people.[61]

On April 9, 2016, American Sleep Association (ASA) and The Huffington Post announced a partnership to increase awareness about the importance of sleep and the dangers of sleep disorders. Through the collaboration, ASA shared information and resources relating to sleep information between the two platforms.[62]

The Huffington Post's OffTheBus is an online news organization using amateur journalists that is a collaboration between The Huffington Post, New York University (NYU), and Jay Rosen's NewAssignment.Net.[63][64]The Huffington Post's FundRace is a website that tracks contributions to the presidential campaigns and includes a mapping feature that shows contributions broken down by city, neighborhood, and block.[65]

Investment

In August 2006, The Huffington Post announced that SoftBank Capital would invest US$5million in the site, which had grown in popularity in only a year, to help expand it.[66] Plans included hiring more staff to update the site 24 hours a day, hiring in-house reporters and a multimedia team to make video reports. Alan Patricof's Greycroft Partners also invested. The news marked the site's "first round of venture capital funding".[67]

The site has now invested in video blogging, with many of the site contributors contributing via video, capturing clips in the media and posting them on the site.

In November 2008, The Huffington Post completed US$15million fundraising from investors to finance expansion, including more journalism and the provision of local news across the United States.[68]

On February 7, 2011, AOL announced it would acquire The Huffington Post for US$315million.[56] As part of the deal, Arianna Huffington became president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, including The Huffington Post and existing AOL properties Engadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone, MapQuest, Black Voices, PopEater (now HuffPost Celebrity), AOL Music, AOL Latino (now HuffPost Voices), AutoBlog, Patch, and StyleList.[15]

Dana Ullman, a notorious homeopathy apologist, actually has a regular blog over at HuffPo. For those of us who follow such things, the start of his blog there marked the point of no return for the Huffington Post – clearly the editors had decided to go the path of Saruman and "abandon reason for madness." They gave up any pretense of caring about scientific integrity and became a rag of pseudoscience.[71]

Labor disputes

In February 2011, Visual Art Source, which had been cross-posting material from its website, went on strike against The Huffington Post.[72] In March 2011, the strike and the call to boycott The Huffington Post was joined and endorsed by the National Writers Union (NWU) and the Newspaper Guild (TNG)[73] The boycott was dropped in October 2011.[74]

In April 2011, The Huffington Post was targeted with a multimillion-dollar lawsuit filed in United States District Court in New York by Jonathan Tasini on behalf of thousands of uncompensated bloggers.[75] The suit was dismissed with prejudice on March 30, 2012 by the court, holding that the bloggers had volunteered their services, their compensation being publication.[76]

Wil Wheaton refused to allow his work to be reused for free on the site, commenting "the company can absolutely afford to pay contributors. The fact that it doesn't, and can get away with it, is distressing to me."[77]

Political stance

Commenting on increased conservative engagement on the website despite its reputation as a liberal news source, Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington has stated that her website is "increasingly seen" as an Internet newspaper that is "not positioned ideologically in terms of how we cover the news."[78] According to Michael Steel, press secretary for Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner, Republican aides "engage with liberal websites like The Huffington Post [anyway, if for] no other reason than [because] they drive a lot of cable coverage."[78] Jon Bekken, journalism professor at Suffolk University, has cited The Huffington Post as an example of an "advocacy newspaper."[79]Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto mockingly calls it the Puffington Host, and Rush Limbaugh frequently refers to it as the Huffington Puffington Post.[80]

During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the Huffington Post regularly appended an editor's note to the end of stories about candidate Donald Trump, reading: "Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S." After Trump was elected on November 8, 2016, the Huffington Post ended this practice.[81]

Awards

In 2012, The Huffington Post won the Pulitzer Prize in the category of national reporting for senior military correspondent David Wood's 10-part series about wounded veterans, Beyond the Battlefield.[82][83]

The Huffington Post is 2010 People's Voice Winner in the 14th Webby Awards[84] and is the Winner in Lead411's New York City Hot 125.[85] The Huffington Post lost the 2010 Webby Award jury prize for Best Political Blog to Truthdig.[86]

The Huffington Post received a Peabody Award in 2010 for "Trafficked: A Youth Radio Investigation."[87]

The Huffington Post was named second among the 25 Best Blogs of 2009 by Time.[88]

The Huffington Post won the 2006 and 2007 Webby Awards for Best Politics Blog.

The Huffington Post contributor Bennet Kelley was awarded the Los Angeles Press Club's 2007 Southern California Journalism Award for Online Commentary[89] for political commentary published on the site.[90]

The Huffington Post is ranked the most powerful blog in the world by The Observer.[91]

The Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington was named in 2009 as number 12 in Forbes' first ever list of the Most Influential Women In Media.[92] The same year, she was ranked as number 42 in The Guardian's Top 100 in Media List.[93]

↑ "Julie Gray". Huffington Post. Retrieved August 1, 2014. A Hollywood refugee living in the Middle East, Julie Gray has authored two books and is working on a memoir. A former Hollywood story analyst who has taught at Warner Bros., Julie now works with entrepreneurs, writers and innovators world wide-to shape narrative, edit stories and bridge the gap between art and commerce.

↑ "Get Off the Bus: CJR". cjr.org. Retrieved March 7, 2009. OffTheBus (OTB) was a citizen-powered campaign news site co-sponsored by The Huffington Post and Jay Rosen's NewAssignment, at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.